My work is largely ethnographic and is meant to give shape and form to various contemporary issues including healthcare struggles, media bias, police brutality, war, femininity and sexual representation. As someone who grew up in a working class household, and as one who was greatly affected by the recession and economic collapse, I believe it is my duty to record the world around me and illustrate the complex dynamics that make up contemporary life.

Many of my older pieces are quite large and meticulously overworked in a nearly obsessive manner. Some also have collage elements that consist of separate drawings, which are then cut out and pieced together to form the composition. I believe the manner of image creation is important, and symbolic of the internal mindset created when confronting or rationalizing the issue being illustrated.

In the past I had been focusing on various disparate elements working together to form a narrative space. It all started with the “Standard Deviation” series, 70 printed works from the combination and reorganization of roughly 350 linocuts. These works juxtaposed human elements and object representations to form a single environment that was a snapshot of everyday human mythologies and experiences. This process evolved to form the ongoing “This Proverbial Life” series, large ink drawings that use these combined elements to relay old proverbs from a contemporary point of view.

In some of my more recent pieces I have been using this theme while exploring a symbolic and literal destruction and regrowth. Images are mashed together, deeply layered, cut through, and warped; and even the paper itself is hand made from documents, trash, and other materials from the world around me. Remnants of personal relics, ashes of loved ones, grass, and blood are being integrated into the fibers of the paper during its creation to help form an artifact that is unique and deeply personal in nature.